* * *
He understood. Once upon a time, he’d even have thought it was a good idea. Out on the back steps, he sat to wait and to hear what little he could of the conversation between Major Ragged Mann and the Quiet Man. Words like ‘surveillance’ and ‘preparedness’ and ‘ordnance’ made their way to his ears, but they were random and unconnected and meaningless.
As he waited, he saw Shoomba tiptoe out to peer over the Duke’s back fence. He had a pencil and a shard of paper and appeared to making notes - or a map. Neville snigged up against the house to make himself less visible, and watched. If Shoomba was picking out the traps left by the Mongolovian wolf hunter, there might be something important to learn. He wondered if the Quiet Man could be laying similar traps in Under and he also wondered about the fate of the Lightning Bug and who might be keeping an eye on things on Apollo Dungeon and eating up the liars while Ragged Man was away being Major Mann.
When he came back to himself, it was to find that the Major had emerged from Under, alone, and was, as the Quiet Man had done, walking the visible boundaries; studying bark markings amongst the bottlebrush, lifting the leaves of the philodendron and sniffing a chewed-looking tendril of the over-hanging choko vine.
At Hughesy’s Corner he stopped and squatted, Indian style, before the ashes of the incinerating slot. Even from his seat on the steps Neville could hear the faint rumble of the Major's voice, carrying on a low conversation with the riders in his shirt pocket.
Neville rose and headed across the yard. He had new questions, specifically about the rightness of helping the Quiet Man tend his flash-bang bombs through the night. What might the Quiet Man do if he was left on his own? What encouragement might get him to throw the bombs away. He'd barely begun to speak, though - barely gotten the Major's attention - when a new voice sailed like a clear hard little pebble, over the fence.
“Pastor Paul!” It was Mrs Hughes. “Is that you over there?”
She’d been forking desultorily at the bare earth on her side of the fence, her ears peeled for new developments in Home Country, and the Major's mumblings had finally rewarded her patience.
“I thought I heard your voice!” she declared as her head bobbed up and her eyes flicked about the yard, taking in the Major and Neville but also, at a scoop, every singular detail of the yard, including its deceitfully peaceful and unperturbed atmosphere.
“Why hello, Dorothy!” Major Ragged Mann declared, smiling broadly, doffing his cap and, at the same time, providing a name that Neville had not known existed. “Lovely day isn't it? What're we up to today? Cleaning up the garden, are we?”
“Yes! Yes!” she declared, though Neville knew nothing resembling a garden existed in Cookie Camp. “Well . . . !” And with a meaning glance at the Home Country house she added, “Keeping an eye out for the, you know . . . ‘notifiable weeds’ I mentioned to you on the phone?”
She allowed her gaze to rest on Neville then and, in her sad concerned voice said, “How are you today, Neville? Is everything . . .? Oh my! Are those fresh scratches on your face? Goodness! And on your arms, Neville? Oh you poor little mite! What . . . what've they been doing to you?”
“Nothing Mrs Hughes,” he said immediately and defensively, knowing that her mind must already be turning to prayer. “I just . . . !” And with Major Ragged Mann's wide expectant truth-seeking eyes also on him, “I just got in an argument with Beau the Bum. It was my fault. It's okay now!”
“Beau the . . .! Oh my!” Doubt, disbelief and visions of lethal weapons danced through her mind and she pointed a rigid finger at the Major. “Pastor Paul is a man you can absolutely trust, Neville. A godly man. If you need someone to talk to; if you need any advice. Or me. Or Mister Hughes. You know you could come to us any time at all, don't you, dear? Day or night! You'll always be safe over here!”
Neville nodded. What else could he do? And Major Ragged Mann, who seemed now also to be Pastor Paul, smiled and emitted a confident chuckle.
“That's very true, Nev'! Safe as houses over there. Right out of harm's way! Whenever you decide 'Things' have got the best of you all in Home Country, you just have to hop over the fence and you’re out of it!”
Neville could tell by the added emphasis that the ‘things’ Major Pastor Paul Ragged Mann was referring to were the Things in Under. He also noted a faint jostling in the man's shirt pocket, as though the creatures in there had heard a good joke and were nudging one another in the ribs. It made him feel a little bit angry, and a little bit feisty.
“I'm not giving up yet,” he said, letting it burp out somewhat louder than he'd intended. And it wasn’t a lie because, just for that moment, he really wasn't afraid!
Mrs Dorothy Hughes clapped her hand to her mouth, as though the mention of giving up had released her own worst fears. She'd surely have climbed over the fence to capture him and take him away for a bible bashing if Major Pastor Paul Ragged Mann hadn’t frozen her with a tsk and a frown.
“Very generous, as always Dorothy’,” he said firmly. “And I’m sure young Neville’s pleased to know there's help at hand if he needs it. Makes us all the more confident doesn't it?” And only he knew whether the 'us' meant him and Neville alone, or the three of them, or everyone in the neighbourhood. “Confident that things'll work out as well as well-meaning people can make them. Whichever way that happens to be.”
“Amen to that,” she said.
“You bet,” the Pastor replied.
“Mysterious ways, I suppose.”
“Keep you guessing, alright.”
“Have you spoken to . . . ?” A flick of the eyes toward the house.
“Oh yes. Interesting. Very interesting.”
“Is there . . . anything we should know?”
“Oh well! Plenty to watch for, I’m sure.”
“Ah! I see! Will we hear more then?”
“For certain. Won’t be long at all.”
She nodded and stepped back from the fence. He nodded and wagged his eyebrows at Neville. Neville shrugged and folded his arms in a way that would’ve, if she’d seen it, reminded Mum of his father. She wouldn’t have had time to dwell on it, of course, because her attention would’ve been grabbed by the popping open of the flap on the man’s shirt and the excited emergence of a black scorpion. It virtually flew out, hissing and clacking its pincers and the man had to make two grabs before he caught it in his cupped hand. Neville was prepared to see it gobbled up but instead, all it received was a ‘Shush’ and an unceremonious plunking into the hat which was even then travelling back to the man’s head.
A great sigh then fell from Major Pastor Paul Ragged Mann’s lips and, “Got any bananas ripe?” he said to Neville. “I'd kill for a hand of Lady Fingers!”
So they walked into the banana palm forest. There were no bananas in season, but the dense cool shade seemed to soothe the man, as well it might after the wild barrenness of Apollo Dungeon.
“Ahhh!” he ahhed, breathing deeply. “It’s the good life you’ve got here, Nev’. And plenty of it to go around too! That’s a thing not everyone can see, ye know! The ‘enough to go around’ bit, I mean.”
Neville shrugged again. It was good in the banana palms, for sure. And up in the mango tree and in the lilly-pilly fort and sailing in the Lightning Bug. Not much of anything else was good though. Eventually Major Pastor Paul Ragged Mann finished his deep breathing and said, “The other thing she was right about - Afsoon, I mean - is, he's building defences alright. Good ones, too.”
“Yeah. And . . . what about the Thing? Things?”
One of his own shrugs came back at him. “Touch and go, mate. Few distractions in the neighbourhood just now, I gather, and they’re definitely not helping. But he’s made a start. Telling you about the boy was a start. And the bomb. That’s taken some wind out of it. Impossible to say how much is left.”
Nev’ used his own unexploded arms to hug himself.
“It was a bad thing to do.”
?
??Yes it was. You know when you said a Thing might’ve gotten inside him? You were right! But it didn’t happen in your Under, mate. It happened the day your dad looked at that boy and didn’ see him. Saw nothing but a walking weapon - a tool to hurt an enemy. That was the day a big part of him got lost. What’s been going on every day since is him wondering if it’s lost forever. Fearing that it’s lost forever.”
“But if he knows where it got lost, why can’t he just . . . ?”
He was about to say “go there again” before the ridiculousness of the thought struck him. ‘There’ was in a war where somebody else’s son was being killed.
“Right,” said Major Pastor Paul Ragged Man. “You see the problem.”“Maybe he’ll let me be killed too then. To help fight his enemy!”
“No Neville. That’s the one thing I can guarantee he won’t let happen. Nothing else is off limits though! Nothing at all. Getting Ava back’d be a help.”
“Because she's a Terrier-of-Death?”
“Nope. Just the opposite. Because she’s a full-on carer. No judgements. No doubts. No grudges. No Things in her Under. You know where she is?”
Neville looked through the palms toward the Duchy. He could see the flag flying there and, below it, the dark mass of the Folly.
“Maybe.”
“Oh,” said Major Pastor Paul Ragged Mann, following his glance. “Here’s hoping she’ll make it on her own then. Life unravels as it sees fit, ye know. To some extent. That’s the rule. One o’ the rules, at least.”
“You’re not going to help, are you?”
“Can’t be counted on, Nev’. People this side always seem to expect it but, you know, I never seem to get much satisfaction out’ve it. Turns into a permanent job for one thing. Folks need to grow up. Take it on themselves. Properly. Responsibly. No, these days I like to fancy meself as a spectator at the parade. Not the crutch hobblin’ along at the head of it. But I do find it interestin’, nonetheless.”
“Are you going to talk to Mum before you go?”
“Oh yeah o’ course! Hey, do us a favour wouldja, and tell her I'll be along shortly? I was kinda counting on getting a lift back in the Lightning Bug but . . . now she’s gone, I gotta look further afield, eh? And I do smell me another little ship somewhere nearby which I just gotta check out. Be back in a tick most prob’ly.”
And he strolled off, uninvited, onto Rahimi Island. Neville, left alone, wandered on, completing a circuit of the boundary, thinking of Ava. How long had it been? Why hadn't she escaped? Chewed her way out of wherever she was being held? Even if she was a full-on carer as well as a Terrier-of-Death, she should’ve chewed her way out and come home. The fact that she hadn’t did not bode well. Not the least bit well.
Evening
The sun set. One by one, the lights in the houses went out. Some people went to their beds to sleep and others to pretend to sleep. Neville’s mum was one of the sleepers, having seen her husband wolf down his drug-laced meal but having failed entirely to see him returning the favour, lacing her food, as she had his, with ground-up sleeping tablets.
Shoomba neither slept nor pretended. He stepped out into the night, clad in his make-shift armour and carrying a fortifying litre of rum in his camel pack. He went first to the back fence where he blinked his torch into the dark yard of the Duchy. No answering blink came so he waited. He waited ten minutes, had three long pulls at his rum and blinked again. Still no answer. He waited fifteen more minutes, blinking every three to five, sipping steadily and marvelling at both the quickness of the cold front that had moved in and the slowness of the Duke who had failed to come out. Until finally the little man was there.
“What do you want, Dennis? What’re you looking for?”
“Uh, there you are! Just lettin’ you know, mate. I’m on the job. You still keepin’ an eye on them ‘Ghani’s? You know? Like always?”
“Are you drunk?”
“What? Me? No, mate! Little somethink to keep the cold out is all. You keepin’ watch or not?”
“Not. I’ve got insurance policies in place.” He gestured broadly, taking in the house, the yard and the dark mass of the Folly. “Now go away! And keep your infernal light out’ve my yard!”
He turned and disappeared into the shadows. Shoomba briefly considered hopping the fence and going after him, to re-explain the increasingly tenuous state of neighbourhood peace. Only the thought of the traps deterred him, he having forgotten, if he’d ever truly realised, that the rumours of their existence were mostly his own invention.
So he backtracked, a lone and heroic vigilante, slipping silently through the paperbark fringe into Home Country where, the very image of stealth, he skirted the garage, slid beneath the darkly fragrant Poinciana and crawled on hands and knees past the banana palms, avoiding (the rum in his system assured him) any chance of being spotted should potential assassins (like the cunning bomb specialist for instance, or the evilly provenanced Riff Rahimi) by chance be lurking there. And, by the mere vagaries of fortune, passing a hair’s breadth clear of hidden trip wires left by the Quiet Man.
At Hughesy’s Corner, next to the incinerator slot, he rose up slowly, warily, and peered into Cookie Camp, half expecting to find an armed and dangerous religious zealot looking back at him. Thankfully, there was none. He blinked his light once, just to let the good folks know it was him, got no reply and sank back to the ground, amongst the damp rotting leaves, to rest against the fence. There was a faint smell of gasoline, he thought, but a long draught of liquid warmth erased it from the air. He put away the torch, the use of which would be risky the closer he got to his target and pulled out his night vision goggles. Only forty dollars on Gumtree! Man’d be a fool not to’ve snapped ‘em up. And then he crawled on, reaching at last the relatively familiar safety of the philodendron.
His plan was to remain here for a while, with a clear view of Tina’s bedroom window, to watch; just to see, as a caring neighbour should, that she was safe from her unstable soldier-husband. Also, of course, there was the matter of that same soldier’s vigorous works through the day. If, as seemed likely, he was preparing for an attack on or from the back neighbours (because with his background of seeing ‘Ghani’s at their neighbour’s throats in their own country, who could blame him for expecting it here?) then Shoomba would be tucked safely away, to witness and document the carnage.
If all remained disappointingly quiet, he would at least take the opportunity to turn his goggle-enhanced vision to the space under Tina’s house and also into her garage, just to see if anything lethal - anything dynamite-ish, for instance - had been stockpiled. And at the lowest end of the interest-scale, there was the chance that those kids - Neville and the witch - might turn up on another filching expedition. (Thinking of which, he made a mental note to re-demand the return of his iron cyclone bolt!)
If they dared to come out, he chuckled to himself, he’d see them ten minutes before their feet hit the ground. And he’d rip a fart up them so fast they’d think the world was ending. Yes indeedy. With the help of good grog and a mind like a steel pot, he was ready. Ready for anything.
Anything, that is, except what he found waiting for him under the enormous leaves of the philodendron. There, he bumped his knuckles on an unremembered brick and dropped his hand onto a cloth that slid over a crinkle of paper. What’s this, he wondered. He blinked his goggle-enhanced eyes at the offending materials. Blinked away the weird green haze. Then he put the goggles up and reached for his penlight for a proper look.
The first thing he recognised was his own red bandana, which he’d thought must be lost under his house. And under the bandana, which was under the brick, he saw the large scrawl of letters on a note. They read, “You have armed an explosive device. Do not move.”